Invited talks
Keynote: Rethinking Memory System Design, Onur Mutlu, ETH Zurich and Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract:
The memory system is a fundamental performance and energy bottleneck in almost all computing systems. Recent system design, application, and technology trends that require more capacity, bandwidth, efficiency, and predictability out of the memory system make it an even more important system bottleneck. At the same time, DRAM and flash technologies are experiencing difficult technology scaling challenges that make the maintenance and enhancement of their capacity, energy efficiency, and reliability significantly more costly with conventional techniques. In fact, recent reliability issues with DRAM, such as the RowHammer problem, are already threatening system security, predictability and robustness.
In this talk, we first discuss major challenges modern memory systems face in the presence of increasing demand for data and its fast analysis. We then examine some promising research and design directions to overcome these challenges and enable scalable memory systems for the future. We discuss three key solution directions: 1) enabling new memory architectures, functions, interfaces, and better integration of memory and the rest of the system, 2) designing a memory system that intelligently employs emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies, 3) reducing memory interference and providing predictable performance to applications sharing the memory system. If time permits, we will also touch upon our ongoing related work in combating scaling challenges of NAND flash memory.
Biography:
Onur Mutlu is the Dr. William D. and Nancy W. Strecker Early Career (Associate) Professor at Carnegie Mellon University Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Computer Science Department. His research group is SAFARI. His research interests are in computer architecture and systems, especially in the interactions between languages, operating systems, compilers, and microarchitecture. He was previously a researcher in the Computer Architecture Group at Microsoft Research (from 2006 to 2009) and a Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (from 2007 to 2009). Before that, he was a member of the HPS Research Group at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his PhD in 2006. His PhD dissertation was on efficient runahead execution processors. He received his BS degrees in computer engineering and psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2000 and his MS degree in electrical and computer engineering from UT-Austin in 2002. He worked at Intel Corporation during the summers of 2001-2003 and at Advanced Micro Devices during the summers of 2004-2005. He was honored and humbled to have received several honors for his research, including the University of Texas George H. Mitchell Award for Excellence in Graduate Research in 2005, Microsoft Gold Star Award in 2008, NSF CAREER Award in 2010, ASPLOS 2010 Best Paper Award, VTS 2010 Best Paper Award, ICCD 2012 Best Paper Award, RTAS 2014 Best Paper Award, 2011 IEEE Computer Society TCCA Young Computer Architect Award, 2012 Intel Early Career Faculty Honor Program Award, 2012 Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering George Tallman Ladd Research Award, and several "computer architecture top pick" paper recognitions by the IEEE Micro magazine.
Invited talk: Embedded Virtualization for the Design of Secure IoT Applications
Carlos Moratelli, Sergio Johann Filho, Marcelo Neves and Fabiano Hessel – PUCRS
Abstract:
Embedded virtualization has emerged as a valuable way to reduce costs, improve software quality, and decrease design time. Additionally, virtualization can enforce the overall system’s security from several perspectives. One is security due to separation, where the hypervisor ensures that one domain does not compromise the execution of other domains. At the same time, the advances in the development of IoT applications opened discussions about the security flaws that were introduced by IoT devices. In a few years, billions of these devices will be connected to the cloud exchanging information. This is an opportunity for hackers to exploit their vulnerabilities, endangering applications connected to such devices. At this point, it is inevitable to consider virtualization as a possible approach for IoT security. In this paper we discuss how embedded virtualization could take place on IoT devices as a sound solution for security.
Invited talk: MORPh: Mobile OLED Power Friendly Camera System
Xiang Chen, Jiachen Mao, Jiafei Gao, Kent Nixon, and Yiran Chen – University of Pittsburgh
Abstract:
With superior advantages of better display quality and power efficiency, the latest OLED technology has achieved unprecedented popularity in the display screen market. However, the OLED remains one of the most power-hungry components in mobile devices. Various optimization schemes have been proposed based on the color-dependent power consumption feature of OLED pixels. These schemes mainly focus on color modification during the playback phase and require significant overhead in terms of frame analysis and real-time modification. While such schemes are effective, the power saving opportunities during the camera recording phase are overlooked. To further enhance the power optimization, the camera parameters during the recording phase could be effectively utilized to reduce or eliminate the optimization overhead. Hence, we proposed MORPh, a cross-layer optimization system for OLED display in the smartphones. We analyze three fundamental parameters of smartphone camera system and their impact on the OLED screen power consumption. We then define corresponding metrics to quantitatively assess each parameter’s potential of power saving guidance. Finally, we develop a set of schemes and integrated them into a video recording and playback application on an existing Android smartphone. The experiments results indicate power saving of 7.3%∼39.7%, and 20.3% on average while maintaining perceived visual quality.
Invited talk: On platforms for CPS - adaptive, predictable and efficient
Lothar Thiele, Felix Sutton, Romain Jacob, Reto da Forno and Jan Beutel – ETH Zurich
Context:
If visions and forecasts of industry come true then we will be soon surrounded by billions of interconnected embedded devices. We will interact with them in a cyber-human symbiosis, they will not only observe us but also our environment, and they will be part of many visible and ubiquitous objects around us. The information that is collectively gathered and analyzed is supposed to help us in our daily live, in making faithful decisions, but it will also directly be used for actuation and it will cause changes by means of local and global control loops.
These systems can be regarded as massively distributed embedded systems with sensing, processing, communication and actuation capabilities. Variations or subclasses are known and have been thoroughly investigated under keywords such as "wireless sensor network (WSN)", "cyber-physical system (CPS)", and "internet of things (IoT)". Potential application domains are too numerous to be listed here, but some examples are in personal health and medicine (measuring environment, context and physiological data and providing information to various recipients), in environmental sensing (indoor and outdoor air pollution, environmental status of our environment), building automation and control, large-scale energy distribution including micro-grids, factory automation, logistics and surveillance.